


Catharsis

by storyandshark



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Melanie does a stab, Slaughter!Melanie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 00:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17193188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyandshark/pseuds/storyandshark
Summary: Elias is released from prison. Melanie is waiting for him.





	Catharsis

It doesn't take nearly long enough for Elias to be released from prison. Or, conversely, it takes too long. Melanie hasn't decided. All she knows is that something happened, some technicality, some loophole in the system. A loophole that probably was a result of him apparently having everyone in the world under his thumb. The police, the Institute, Jon, Daisy, even fucking Martin. They'd made a mistake leaving him alive. Even if he wasn't dangerous, he deserved worse than prison.

Melanie's going to give him worse.

She doesn't know where he is. She's not a creature of the Beholding, that's for Elias and Jon and their research and their papers and their tape recorders. No, Melanie is part of something far darker, something red and violent and angry. She doesn't know what it is. She's never bothered to learn. It's different than what Daisy is, ruthless and ravening and trapped in a coffin somewhere. No, where Daisy has that cold love of the hunt, the passion for the chase as much as the kill, Melanie had only rage, the desire to bring death and violence. Rage, building and burning and trying to break out of her, boiling inside her until she thinks she'll explode. That is what she is. And for all his omniscience and scheming and seeing, Melanie is going to make sure that her rage is the only thing Elias knows when he dies.

She finds him. It's not difficult. As soon as she heard he'd been released, she left her desk and useless research, and started her search. She knows where he's going. The Institute. The Archives. It's where he's strongest. It's where he does go. It's where she finds him walking to in the dim yellow glare of the streetlights. He's wearing a suit, none the worse for wear after his arrest. Melanie will make him worse.

She's standing in front of the doors before he reaches them. Standing there, waiting, the knife a comforting weight hidden under her jacket. “Elias,” she says as he approaches, calmer than the roiling emotions inside her.

“Melanie,” he says, giving her the polite boss-smile that makes her want to gut him right there. “I would say I was surprised to see you, but, well...” His smile widens.

“Walk,” she snaps, no time for his nonsense.

“Why?” He's nonplussed, calm and collected and utterly infuriating.

She shifts her jacket to give him a view of the knife, although he must know already that it's there. “ _Walk_.”

He stands, looking at her, and through her, and inside her. Then he walks, turning back to go back down the sidewalk he came from. Melanie is surprised, shocked into stillness for just a moment before she follows close behind him. She grabs him roughly by the arm, revolted by touching him but needing to direct him. If he gets in control, her game is over. Which is why she won't let him.

“I'm surprised you didn't come to visit me before.” Nothing in his tone has changed, still the same unworried, even tone.

“I can be patient when I want to,” she replies, restraining her other hand from straying to the knife and shoving it deep, deep into his spine.

“You, maybe. The Slaughter, not as much.” He waits for her response, which she doesn't give him. “It has gotten stronger, hasn't it?”

“Shut up.”

“You're barely even human anymore, with how much the Slaughter has taken hold. You know what it's doing to you, don't you? How it's changing you?”

“Shut up!” She shoves him with her free hand, sending him stumbling and breaking his composure just enough that a tiny bit of the rage gives to ecstasy.

He regains his footing, keeps walking utterly calmly where she directs him. “You won't kill me,” he says.

She laughs long and harsh. “You really think that? You must not be able to see in my head anymore.”

“You don't want to feed the Slaughter. I know you can feel it. I know you're afraid of it.”

She reaches for the knife, readying to kill him, but stays her hand. No. No, not yet. He's not scared. She's going to make him scared first. She just shoves him along into an alleyway, the glow of the street lamps fading away, leaving them cloaked in shadows.

When she says nothing, he continues talking. “Do you remember what I said last time we spoke? During your performance review, I believe. I told you the consequences of further attempts on my life.”

And she feels him inside her mind. Her father, dead. Her father, killed by horrible things in the home she'd thought he'd be safe. A disease, eating him away from the inside, stealing his life, and all the while he was in so much pain, suffering so much. And now she can begin to see it, vague shapes of the thing that took her father's life.

No. _No_. She snarls and slams him into the nearest brick wall, hand shifting from his arm to his throat, knife digging into the mortar beside his head. The foreign memory stops dead, leaving her mind as quickly as it was forced in. He reaches up a hand, fingers coming away covered in blood from his ear. Melanie hasn't quite severed it, but it's damn close. He stares at the blood, reaches up to touch what's left of his ear. Something like shock blooms on Elias's face. And Melanie feels her blood sing.

“Don't you dare,” she hisses, yanking the knife out of the bricks and pulling him back from the wall. She lets him go, backing a step away but keeping her knife ready if he moves.

He laughs. “I'm surprised, Ms. King. I believe I've underestimated you.”

“You have.” She steps slowly to the side, then again, circling him like a predator stalking its prey. “You always did. Poor little Melanie, so easy to break, the only one stupid enough to sign herself away to these fucking Archives.”

He doesn't turn to look at her, doesn't even try to stop the bleeding from his mangled ear. In control, once again. “I must admit, I'm impressed. So few can resist me. Of course, that only counts for humans, so perhaps I am giving you too much praise.”

“I don't care what I am,” she says, despite the tiny voice inside her telling her that she does, that she should.

“Ah, yes. You only care about killing me.” His eyes follow her as she walks in front of him, but otherwise he doesn't move. “How cliché.”

She stops circling, electing instead to stare him straight down. “That is all I care about.”

“Then you already know why that is ill-advised.” She feels him creeping in at the edges of her mind again.

Kill him. Kill him now.

No.

Not yet.

This attempt is weaker, though it's a larger transgression this time. She takes a second to deliberate (her father, breathing his last, pus-filled breath), then switches her knife to her other hand and grabs him around the back of the head, digging her thumb into his wounded ear. He barely reacts, though she feels him retract from inside her head.

When she carves out his eye, he's much less composed.

He still doesn't scream, just gives a muted, keening moan, pushing at her feebly. She shoves him away, his back hitting the brick. He doubles over, holding the empty hole in his head where is right eye had been, blood running down through his fingers. Now his eye on the ground, or what part of it wasn't utterly destroyed. Melanie crushes it under her shoe.

“It's really taking a toll on you, isn't it,” she sneers. “Your little field trip away from the Institute. I barely felt that last attempt.”

He doesn't answer, just looks at her emotionlessly with his remaining eye. His breathing is heavier now, and he obviously felt her stabbing out his eye, but he's still not scared. That won't do. She wants him scared. She _needs_ him scared. She can carve pieces out of him all she wants, but he won't be afraid. No, he'll only start feeling afraid when he loses control. After all of this, he still thinks he has a handle on this situation. She almost laughs. Almost.

“You still think you're in control, don't you?” she asks him.

“Because I _am_ in control,” he answers, his voice thick as the blood runs into his mouth. “I know you won't kill me. And I could end this in a moment if I wanted to. I scream, the police come running. I don't think they'll be nearly as kind to you.”

“Do it, then. See if it matters after I gut you before anyone can even think of reaching you.” She spreads her arms, blood from the knife flinging in a wide arc around her. Nothing. “I thought so.”

“You won't kill me," he insists, as if he can still read her thoughts, as if he knows what she's capable of.

She scoffs. “After everything you did to me? Death is more than you deserve.” She steps toward him, slowly, deliberately. “I'm going to carve you into pieces. I'm going to make you suffer like you made me suffer.”

“You can't kill me,” he tries instead. “Even the other times you've tried before, you've never truly considered the consequences. How there's no turning back from murder. How this will turn you into that anger inside you that you hate so much.”

She does laugh now. “You really think that matters anymore? If not this, if not the Slaughter, then the Stranger, or the Eye, or the Hunt, or the _whatever_. You know it better than I do, Elias. Once you go into those Archives, you're not going to stay human.”

“I can see your thoughts, Ms. King. I know when you're lying.”

Yes, says some small part of her. She is afraid of it. Yes, she wants to stay human. No, she won't kill him. But it's a small part, one that she can shove down into the boiling heat of her rage, burning it away until it's gone. No mercy, no qualms. No hesitation.

He seems to notice. “You can't kill me,” Elias says once again, as if the words will make it into a reality, blood filled mouth turning up into a sneer. “Even animals retain their desire for self-preservation. If you kill me, you die.”

Melanie isn't lying when she answers, ”You seem to think I care.”

There it is. A small flicker across his face, a drop in his posture, a twitch of his mouth. Fear.

 _Fear_.

His blood runs like water into the space between the cobblestones.


End file.
